mathwikiaorg-20200223-history
ISO 639
ISO 639 is a set of standards by the International Organization for Standardization that is concerned with representation of names for language and language groups. It was also the name of the original standard, approved in 1967 (as ISO 639/R) and withdrawn in 2002. The ISO 639 set consists of six parts. The six parts of the standard Each part of the standard is maintained by a maintenance agency, which adds codes and changes the status of codes when needed. Characteristics of individual codes Scopes: * Individual languages * Macrolanguages (part 3) * Collections of languages (part 1, 2, 5) (part 1 contains only 1 collection: bh; most collections are in part 2, and a few were added in part 5) ** Group ** Rest group * Dialects * Reserved for local use (part 2, 3) * Special situations (part 2, 3) Types (for individual languages): * Living languages (part 2, 3) (all macrolanguages are living languages) * Extinct languages (part 2, 3) (437, four in part 2 chb, chg, cop, sam; none in part 1) * Ancient languages (part 1, 2, 3) (112, 19 are in part 2; and 5 of them, namely ave, chu, lat, pli and san, also have a code in part 1: ae, cu, la, pi, sa) * Historic languages (part 2, 3) (63, 16 of them are in part 2, none has part 1 code) * Constructed languages (part 2, 3) (19, 9 in part 2: epo, ina, ile, ido, vol, afh, jbo, tlh, zbl; five in part 1: eo, ia, i.e., io, vo) Bibliographic and terminology codes * Bibliographic (part 2) * Terminology (part 2) Relations between the parts The first four columns contain codes for a representative of a specific type of relation between the parts of ISO 639. E.g. there are four elements that have a code in part 1, have a B/T code, and are macrolanguages per part 3. One representative of these four elements is "Persian" fas. * codes in Part 1 have one or two codes (B/T codes) in Part 2, every language that has two codes in Part 2 has one code in Part 1 ** one code: en -> eng ** two codes (#~23): de <-> ger/deu * Part 2 has reserved codes and three special codes ** qaa ... qtz, mul, und, zxx * individual languages in Part 2 have a code in Part 3 and have one or no code in Part 1 ** one code: eng -> eng -> en ** no code: ast -> ast -> (empty) * collective codes in Part 2 have a code in Part 5 ** cover different languages: afa != afa ** cover same languages: aus = aus * one collective code in Part 2 has a code in Part 1 ** bih -> bh * some codes in Part 5 have no code in Part 2 ** sqj * some codes (#~56) in Part 3 are macrolanguages, they may have ** no Part 2 code but a Part 1 codes and their containing languages have codes in Part 2 and Part 1 (#1): hbs <-> sh (deprecated) ; bos, hrv/scr, srp/scc -> bs, hr, sr ** a Part 2 code and a Part 1 code(#1), while their containing languages also have codes in Part 1 and Part 2: nor -> nor -> no ; non, nob -> non, nob -> nn, nb ** no Part 1 code (#several): ** two Part 2 codes (B/T) (#4): fas, msa, sqi, zho -> per/fas, may/msa, alb/sqi, chi/zho Code space Alpha-2 code space "Alpha-2" codes (for codes composed of 2 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) are used in ISO 639-1. When codes for a wider range of languages were desired, more than 2 letter combinations could cover (a maximum of 262 = 676), ISO 639-2 was developed using Alpha-3 codes (though the latter was formally published first). Alpha-3 code space "Alpha-3" codes (for codes composed of 3 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) are used in ISO 639-2, ISO 639-3, and ISO 639-5. The number of languages and language groups that can be so represented is 263 = 17,576. The common use of Alpha-3 codes by three parts of ISO 639 requires some coordination within a larger system. Part 2 defines four special codes mul, und, mis, zxx, a reserved range qaa-qtz (20 × 26 = 520 codes) and has 23 double entries (the B/T codes). This sums up to 520 + 23 + 4 = 547 codes that cannot be used in part 3 to represent languages or in part 5 to represent language families or groups. The remainder is 17,576 – 547 = 17,029. There are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today. So those 17,029 codes are adequate to assign a unique code to each language, although some languages may end up with arbitrary codes that sound nothing like the traditional name(s) of that language. Alpha-4 code space "Alpha-4" codes (for codes composed of 4 letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet) is proposed to be used in ISO 639-6. The upper limit for the number of languages and dialects that can be represented is 264 = 456,976. See also * IETF language tags (based on ISO 639) * ISO 3166 (codes for countries) * ISO 15924 (codes for writing systems) * ISO, SIL, and BCP language codes for constructed languages * Language code * Language families and languages * List of languages * List of official languages Notes and references External links * Official ISO 639 list * ISO 639-2 Registration Authority * ISO 639-3 Registration Authority * Common Locale Data Repository which contains translations of ISO 639 codes in other languages in an XML format. The CLDR survey tool also contains a more readable format of the data. * ISO 639 and the Ethnologue * ISO 639 Registration Authority Report, 2004–2005 * ISO 639-2/RA Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages, US Library of Congress #00639 Category:ISO 639 Category:Identifiers Category:Internationalization and localization